The Secret Astronomers: A Novel in Notes by Jessica Walker

 genre: young adult fiction

In a West Virginian high school library is an old, and I mean OLD, physics textbook.  If you happen to find this book, you'll discover the notes between two students, strangers, and the mystery they try to uncover.  One of these students was born and raised in a West Virginian holler and another is a transplant from San Fransisco with family ties to the area.  Their different ways of looking at the world will show up time and and again as they get to know each other and as they navigate the complications of high school life.

I really appreciate creative storytelling, and I found this book to be just the kind of creative that surprises me.  This epistolary story is told in the length of a textbook with drawings and doodles and artwork all over pages that teach us about how scientists understood our world back in the late 1800s.  The mystery isn't some kind of huge reveal but by the end I realized, the mystery isn't the point.  The point is that these two students have stretched each other's minds, they've examined their own biases and also recognized biases in others.  City vs rural and liberal vs conservative, that is a part of this book too and I liked they even when they called each other out, they managed to still stay connected.  Four stars for creativity and a good example of how to handle it when people show up in ways that we know don't feel good.